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Election Recount Progress and Some Future Election Security Proposals

Jill Stein’s campaign is on track to raise enough money for the audits of the three key swing states.

Jill Stein, the Green party’s candidate in the US presidential election, formally filed a motion for a recount in Wisconsin on Friday as her funding effort for counting the votes again in three states passed $5m.

These groups have called on Clinton to intervene. She is leading in the popular vote by more than 2.1m votes, a lead which is expected to grow.

While the election was close in Wisconsin, there’s no actual evidence of hacking or tampering there, and the statistical variances that alarmed cybersecurity researchers are explainable by demographic shifts. And even if the Wisconsin recount does go Clinton’s way, Trump would have five business days to appeal that result in circuit court. Should Clinton win that challenge as well, the state’s 10 Electoral College votes still would not give her the election.

For that, she would need Stein’s other two proposed recounts to fall her way as well. Clinton lost Michigan by just 10,704 votes. But Trump outpaced her by 1.2 percent in Pennsylvania, a 70,638 vote margin. Only by reversing all of those results would Clinton swing the Electoral College.

That’s going to be a big ask, especially given that there’s no tangible reason to doubt the validity of the results in hand. And if Stein’s real aim is to ensure that there was no hacking involved, a robust audit would likely achieve that with less of a financial burden–especially given that in Wisconsin, the vast majority of counties use paper ballots in the first place.

So yes, there’s time left in 2016 for one more unpredictable swing. This one, though, would be biggest yet.